"I'm not a child anymore, Mother! Damnit, just let me be!"
"Draco, hush yourself. You can't talk to me like that, I am your mother." Narcissa Malfoy's cold voice cut through the air, "And just because your father isn't pushing his standards on you, doesn't mean that I'm not going to. You can't fail school like this!"
Draco growled low in his throat, "And E is hardly a fail, mother! Just because I didn't get an O-!"
"Just because you didn't get an O, that makes you lesser than the other children. Get yourself together. Just because your father is gone-"
"He's not gone!" Draco's words were sharp, and there was a shaky tone to them.
Narcissa looked startled, "I didn't say dead, Draco, I merely said..."
"He's not gone, damnit! He's here more than you are! He's...he's..." Draco Malfoy, for once, was at a loss for words.
That had been happening more and more often lately, he realized. He wasn't able to find the words to express his feelings, so they lay inside. He was not a child anymore, so he didn't express his feelings in motions or tears. But he wasn't quite an adult, so he didn't know the words to let out his feelings.
"Draco, you can tell me what's wrong..." Severus's normally emotionless voice was laced with concern, "It's clear that you've not been eating, your grades are dropping..."
"It's nothing! Nothing is wrong, and I can take care of myself!"
"Draco, no one is asking you to take care of yourself. We are here to help you. I'm here to help you. As an old friend of Lucius's, I know he'd want me to..."
"You don't know what he'd want!"
Draco was tired of people trying to speak for his father, to put words into a mouth that wasn't there anymore. Lucius couldn't put forth the advice Draco so desperately needed to hear right now. It was less that Draco needed advice from his father, so much as he needed to hear his voice. That rich, low purr. The soothing tones that only became warm when Lucius was completely alone with his son, the soft laughter that Draco tried so hard to earn.
"Draco, you need to start eating again. All the teachers have been watching you, and we can see..."
"What? You can see that I've lost some weight? So what? Maybe I'm trying to slim down for Quidditch. Just get off my back."
"We're just trying to do what's in your best interest! Your parents would want..."
"My mother already tells me what she wants! I don't need another mother in you, Madame Pomfrey." His words were unaffected, and almost emotionless.
"Your father, then, he wouldn't want..."
"Stop it!"
Maybe it was just the fact that everyone brought up Lucius, Draco realized. Lucius was some sort of bargaining chip. If Lucius's name was brought up, then people almost always did what they were being told to do. But Draco was Lucius's SON. That name wasn't going to strike fear into his heart. Only Lucius could tell Draco what he wanted. Narcissa, Severus, Madame Pomfrey couldn't talk for him.
"Draco. Take care of yourself."
"Father, you can't really...they have to let you off, you're...you're YOU." Draco was at a loss for words again.
"Goodbye, Draco."
"You'll be back? They'll let you out, won't they?"
"Goodbye, Draco. Take care of yourself in my absence."
Those were the last words as Draco saw his father taken to prison. And people then celebrated it. 'Lucius Malfoy is in prison,' they said, 'We're safe now.' And still other people said, 'Lucius Malfoy is finally gone, we can breathe easily'. And each time Draco had to sneer and pretend that he knew his father was going to be coming back. But he didn't, really. It was a childish notion that a parent would come riding back from prison.
"Draco, please! Stop turning away from me!" Severus's voice was cracked with the strain of the war, "I'm just trying to help you!"
Draco shook his head slightly, white face buried in whiter, skeletal hands. "And what do you think you can do to help me? You just want my glory, that's all." The boy hissed out.
Severus shook his head, "You stupid boy! I don't want your-"
"Shut up! That's ALL you want!"
Bur really, Draco knew that that wasn't the truth. He knew that Severus really did want to help him, but he didn't want help. He was going to prove for once that he could survive outside of his father's shadow. He could step out from under the protective black cloak of Lucius Malfoy's name, the huge aura that his father left behind him for his son to live up to.
And slowly, as everyone tried to help him, throwing his father's name at him like some sort of safety line, he saw his future and past crumbling away from him.
And when Lucius Malfoy's shadow finally lifted from him, he realized he was nobody.
Not even a nobody.
Just…nobody.